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Reports: Fallujah residents eat grass and drink contaminated water to survive

June 3, 2016 at 1:03 pm

Reports by relief organizations and testimonies by people who managed to escape from the city of Fallujah have revealed that residents live under disastrous condition, having to eat grass and drink contaminated river water to survive.

According to relief organizations, about 50,000 people do not have safe exits from the city and are likely to fall in the crossfire.

A senior UNHCR Public Information Officer in Baghdad Caroline Gluck said, “There is severe shortage of food and medicines in the city of Fallujah where some families search for food in the garbage.”

“Some people have become so desperate they committed suicide, while children had signs of shock on their faces and were clearly terrified,” she added.

Bahjat Ibrahim, a former city resident who now lives in a refugee camp in Sulaimaniya, said, “Those who live inside Fallujah can not get out, and those in the outside can not lend a helping hand to them.”

“There is no food at all. The price for a bag of flour has reached one million Iraqi dinars ($850),” Ibrahim said.

He called on the Iraqi security forces to allow the people of Fallujah to escape from the city and to “receive them properly”.

The Iraqi security forces and allied militiamen surrounded the city of Fallujah more than six months ago in a bid to retake it from Daesh.